We like to think and talk about strange and excluded things: from ghosts and UFOs to forgotten history and strange beliefs. See below for more details.
We're forteans, we're open minded and we welcome everyone online and at our meetings.
Contact us on forteansociety@live.co.uk

Monday, 13 June 2016

The end of life has never meant the extinction of hope. Throughout history people have yearned for, and often been terrified by, continuance beyond the horizon of mortality.

In his unique new book, Philip C. Almond examines the history of ideas surrounding life after death. Ranging from the banks of the river Styx to the legendary Isles of the Blessed and from Dante’s Inferno to the fusion of Heavenly and Hellish worlds in the fantasy creations of twentieth century literature, this talk will provide an illuminating journey of the hereafter as imagined in literature, philosophy and religion throughout the centuries.

Philip C. Almond is Associate Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences (Research) and Professorial Research Fellow at the Centre for the History of European Discourses at The University of Queensland. He is the author of many books, including The Devil: A New Biography andAfterlife: A History of Life after Death, both from Cornell; The Lancashire Witches: A Chronicle of Sorcery and Death on Pendle Hill; Adam and Eve in Seventeenth-Century Thought; and Heaven and Hell in Enlightenment England

Monday, 6 June 2016

In 1762 the ghost of a murder victim appeared to be haunting a little girl in Smithfield; Scratching Fanny of Cock Lane attracted mobs of curious onlookers outside the house, a visit from the heir to the throne, an investigation by Dr Johnson and finally a lawsuit.

The Cock Lane ghost was the world’s first example of a media circus, and it arose from a spirit of anarchy and disruptiveness quite specific to this ancient area of London. Was the Cock Lane Ghost simply a pub joke that went wrong? Some new research may shed light on this famous ghost story.

Roger Clarke's book A Natural History of Ghosts has most recently been published in Spain. Japanese publication is this July, and the mass-market paperback in the USA over Halloween after a rave review in The New York Times.